Pin curls, perms and the art of conversation: Sask. hairdresser hangs up shears after nearly 60 years

Eileen Mitchell fully intended to mark her 60th anniversary as a hairdresser in June of 2021. Then the pandemic hit.

"I'm really not ready yet to quit," Mitchell told Stefani Langenegger, host of CBC Radio's The Morning Edition on Tuesday.

Despite her reluctance to do so, the precautions required for hairstylists in a post-COVID-19 world have prompted Mitchell to hang up her shears just shy of the six-decade mark.

A lifelong passion

"I still don't know why I had such passion for it, but I just, that's who I was,"Mitchell said."I just loved it, right from the time I was a little girl."

She remembers doing pin curlswhen she was as young as nine years old.

"I used to get out of a lot of Saturday work," she laughed.

Mitchell went to Marvel Beauty School in Regina at16, after finishingGrade 10. She trained for nine months before returning to her home north of the city to open her own salon.

"It was a little bit challenging," Mitchell said. "There was nobody to ask questions."

She had to read the instructions for every perm and every colour.

"You couldn't Google any of that," she said.

In fact, Mitchell did not even have running water in the early days ofhersalon. A delivery man would fill a barrel or she would melt snow to do all the washingand rinsing required in a day.

Learning the art of conversation

Eventually Mitchell married and had two daughters. The salon moved into the family's basement.

"We would get called fairly regularly to come and help," Shauna Rosloot, one of Mitchell's daughters, said. "Maybe take curlers out when mom was doing sets. We'd take the rollers out. Every once in a while she'd let us wash, generally younger kids' hair."

Rosloot and her sister were mostly there to listen.

"That was one of the places where we learned the art of conversation, because mom was really good at it to keep those conversations going," Rosloot said. "We learned all kinds of interesting things."

"Sorry," her mom chimed in.

Rosloot said she doesn't like how her mother's long-time career as a hairdresser and business owner wasderailed so unexpectedly by the pandemic.

"I want her to know that even though she may be having to end now, her career has been wonderful," Rosloot said, choking up.

Mitchell seemed to have made peace with it.

"I was going for 80," said the 77-year-old hairdresser. "But I guess maybe eventually there's a time when you have to quit. Maybe this was the time."